Not the enemy

Have you ever had that feeling like you're in enemy territory and absolutely everyone is actively attacking you and doing everything in their power to bring you down in the most painful way possible? No? Well, then you must not have a severely crippling anxiety disorder. For those of you who said yes, welcome to the club. It's a crappy club that no one wants to be a member of, but you can never ever leave.

This has been a distressing week, despite good news. Unfortunately, one piece of good news does little to negate the verbal and emotional attacks that have come from within and without lately. It's exhausting, and made all the worse when sleep is a precious commodity that is chased away by the physical symptoms of stress: pain, mostly.

It all started when I decided to say something. It needed to be said, but I hate confrontation. I know it sounds odd since I always seem to be confronting something, but I prefer passive aggressive confrontation to actual out right "this is not working" because I've gotten so beat up about those direct messages so many times in the past. I'm not very diplomatic, so I normally have as many people as possibly read my negative message before sending it to the intended too make sure I'm not coming across as too bitchy. Even though I always seem to come across as too bitchy. With every good intention, I'm still told (figuratively if not literally) to sit down and shut up, I'm just a stupid little girl. It's frustrating at the best of times.

I also broke my own promise to myself- instantly beating myself up for my slip- and posted an opinion on social media. Obviously, not a popular opinion, because as most smart people know, you are only allowed to have an opinion on social media if everyone else agrees with it. You are allowed to have an original thought only if several highly educated strangers with a bunch of letters after their names had them first. And even then, only if everyone else in your social media sphere agrees with those thoughts. Otherwise you get called a sociopath by anonymous people you've never met, will probably never meet, and if given half a chance will avoid. Now, the dictionary defines a sociopath as "a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience." Apparently that definition is being expanded to someone who expects honesty and integrity from their fellow human beings. So, fine, I'll be a sociopath if that means I get to demand an honest day's work for an honest day's wage.

There's also been an increase in unsavory characters around the neighborhood over the last few weeks. While walking the dogs, we came across two people who were obviously high on something that had fried their brains. We're not talking marijuana here, either. No, these two had all the signs of a meth addiction. Then, a few days later, while driving to the store, we had to avoid another one of these addicts walking down the middle of the street. Finally, yesterday while walking the dogs, there was a guy drinking out of a brown paper bag, using a tree to hold himself upright, muttering to himself, with a sign by his feet that may have been asking for money. I'm sorry to go back into my bitch mode, but I don't like having this kind of behavior so close to home! It's spring break for the schools around here and there are a lot of kids out and about playing in the nice weather. Knowing this is going on, I won't even let my 11 year old go to the mail box by himself. And that sucks. I also now suspect it's why Steve's phone was apparently stolen from our garage a few weeks ago.

So, with all that stress about the neighborhood turning to shit, it was really bad timing to receive notice from our landlord that the HOA has complained that our trash cans are visible from the street. Yeah, our's and most of the neighborhood's. We put the rubbish bins on the side of the house where we found them 8 1/2 months ago when we moved in! Plus, no we can't put them in the backyard because the fences are in such appalling condition that we can't open the gates. I told Steve I'll put a tarp over them.

Still, it's only our problem for another 2 1/2 months! That's the one bit of good news: our mortgage for Whanau Farm has officially been approved! I'm freaking out a little, but I can't wait to be in our own place again, far away from anything resembling the Nazi regime of an HOA.